C o l u m n s |
 Shock and awe at Kashi | | 2003-05-08 | Usha Sahana | Indian express | | A visit to the Hindu holy city of Kashi ‘shocks’ the senses and the ‘awe’ that that one expects to feel at the holiest of Hindu pilgrim centres remains an illusion. On a recent visit to the city, I was appalled at the state of the roads, buildings and, most of all, the surroundings of the Kashi Viswanath temple and the temple itself. |  | |
| ‘AirLand’ synergy the key | | 2003-05-07 | Gurmeet Kanwal | Hindustan times | | The foremost military lesson from Operation Iraqi Freedom is that while air power must be employed extensively in modern conflict, without ‘boots on the ground’ in large numbers, military objectives cannot be achieved. | | | |
| How to solve the problem of Togadia | | 2003-05-05 | POLITICAL DIARY/NILANJANA BHADURI JHA | The Times Of India | | She intended it as a politically correct answer, but Mayawati may have hit the nail on the head as far as dealing with Pravin Togadia and his trishul agenda are concerned. Ignoring him might just make him go away | | | |
| How to solve the problem of Togadia | | 2003-05-05 | POLITICAL DIARY/NILANJANA BHADURI JHA | The Times Of India | | She intended it as a politically correct answer, but Mayawati may have hit the nail on the head as far as dealing with Pravin Togadia and his trishul agenda are concerned. Ignoring him might just make him go away | | | |
| Yes, but where are the Saddam look-alikes? | | 2003-05-02 | COLLATERAL DAMAGE/SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN | The Times Of India | | Ever since the fall of Baghdad, everyone's been asking where's Saddam and where are the weapons of mass destruction he allegedly had. Fair enough. But the question that intrigues me the most is this: Where on earth are his famed look-alikes? If Saddam is dead, did they all, to the last man, die with him? And if he's slipped out of the country -- to Syria, Belarus, wherever -- did he manage to take each and every one of his replicas with him? Are there, even as we speak, a dozen Saddams sadly sipping vodka (doubles, no doubt) in some seedy bar in Minsk or Vitebsk? | | | |
| ‘AirLand’ synergy the key | | 2003-05-01 | Gurmeet Kanwal | Hindustan Times | | The foremost military lesson from Operation Iraqi Freedom is that while air power must be employed extensively in modern conflict, without ‘boots on the ground’ in large numbers, military objectives cannot be achieved. | | | |
| Where are the imperialist profits? | | 2003-04-22 | SWAMINOMICS/SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR | The Times Of India | | Many people interpret the Iraq war as part of a US plot to dominate the world through multinational corporations, some of whom are getting huge contracts to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure. The military industrial complex, it is said, has benefited enormously since George Bush declared the US was at war with terror, and his beloved oil companies will now feed at the trough. The Iraq war, say critics, has little to do with democracy, it is a part of an imperial plot for US multinationals to take over and exploit the whole world | | | |
| SARS: Be very, very afraid | | 2003-04-21 | Dr Chandra M Gulhati | Hindustan Times | | With fanfare the Union Health Ministry announced that the government was fully geared to meet any eventuality arising out of the entry of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) into India. | | | |
| Iraq needs free press, free markets | | 2003-04-16 | SWAMINOMICS/SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR | The Times Of India | | I am shocked and awed. The Iraq war seems as good as over in just three weeks, half the length of the 1991 Gulf War. | | | |
| The Aftermath: Five Questions | | 2003-04-15 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan Times | | The end, when it did arrive, came with a chilling suddenness. One day we were trying to reconcile two different characterisations of the war: the Americans said they were at Baghdad airport while the Iraqis said that the airport was back in the control of Saddam’s forces. And the next day, it was all over. American forces had marched into the centre of Baghdad and the Republican Guard, about whom we had heard so much, had melted into the night. | | | |
| What Has The Antony Govt. Done For Kerala?' | | 2003-04-15 | K Karunakaran | Rediff News | | After loyally serving the Congress party for nearly 60 years, veteran Congress leader and former Kerala chief minister Kunnoth Karunakaran has taken the party leadership head-on. | | | |
| Grave perils of 'pre-emption' | | 2003-04-15 | Praful Bidwai | Rediff News | | On the Indian government's Iraq policy, the public has long witnessed a bizarre drama bordering on the ridiculous. The government could not indefinitely ignore the widespread, growing public sentiment against the Anglo-American coalition's unjust, illegal and brutal war on Iraq. (Numerous polls show that the 85 per cent of people oppose it.) | | | |
| Death of an army foretold | | 2003-04-15 | VR Raghavan | Hindustan Times | | Why the Iraqi military collapse so fast and so completely is a question that is doing the rounds the world over. If the coalition forces were delayed, it was more a consequence of the Iraqi people not rising against their regime. The Iraqi military put up little if any resistance. What contributed to this caving in of a military edifice, which was thought to be based on a powerfully equipped and trained force? One needs to look long into the past of Saddam Hussein’s regime to find an answer. And that search for answers shows the death of the Iraqi military machine being foretold by its past. | | | |
| Death of an army foretold | | 2003-04-14 | VR Raghavan | Hindustan times | | Why the Iraqi military collapse so fast and so completely is a question that is doing the rounds the world over. If the coalition forces were delayed, it was more a consequence of the Iraqi people not rising against their regime. The Iraqi military put up little if any resistance. What contributed to this caving in of a military edifice, which was thought to be based on a powerfully equipped and trained force? One needs to look long into the past of Saddam Hussein’s regime to find an answer. And that search for answers shows the death of the Iraqi military machine being foretold by its past. | | | |
| The Aftermath: Five Questions | | 2003-04-14 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan times | | The end, when it did arrive, came with a chilling suddenness. One day we were trying to reconcile two different characterisations of the war: the Americans said they were at Baghdad airport while the Iraqis said that the airport was back in the control of Saddam’s forces. And the next day, it was all over. American forces had marched into the centre of Baghdad and the Republican Guard, about whom we had heard so much, had melted into the night. | | | |
| America may win the war, but peace may be elusive | | 2003-04-10 | A K Pasha | Rediff News | | George W Bush's team had convinced him a massive air attack followed by a ground invasion in Iraq would quickly bring an end to Saddam Hussein's regime. They said the Iraqis, especially the Shias, would rebel against Saddam and welcome the US invasion to 'liberate' Iraq. It was also believed that key Iraqi leaders, both Ba'athist and military, would desert Saddam and facilitate a quick US takeover. | | | |
| The Emperor's new clothes | | 2003-04-07 | Praful Bidwai | Rediff News | | This is written as the Iraq war runs into its third week and the world watches its increasingly savage human consequences, and the incredible ineptitude and wooden-headedness of the leaders of history's militarily mightiest nation. The Anglo-American coalition has committed a number of strategic errors. It has suffered a series of military -- and more important, political -- setbacks which seriously weaken its credibility. There are growing disputes in Washington about the wisdom of the war strategy adopted. Global concerns are mounting over the indiscriminate killing of civilians and use of illegitimate weapons employing depleted uranium. | | | |
| The Emperor's new clothes | | 2003-04-07 | Praful Bidwai | Rediff News | | This is written as the Iraq war runs into its third week and the world watches its increasingly savage human consequences, and the incredible ineptitude and wooden-headedness of the leaders of history's militarily mightiest nation. The Anglo-American coalition has committed a number of strategic errors. It has suffered a series of military -- and more important, political -- setbacks which seriously weaken its credibility. There are growing disputes in Washington about the wisdom of the war strategy adopted. Global concerns are mounting over the indiscriminate killing of civilians and use of illegitimate weapons employing depleted uranium. | | | |
| In the name of the People | | 2003-04-07 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan times | | On Saturday, Condoleezza Rice told the press that Washington intended to appoint a US Army general as the administrator of the conquered Iraq once the war was over. Only at some stage in the future, she suggested, would power pass from the Pentagon to an interim Iraqi civilian authority. | | | |
| In the name of the People | | 2003-04-07 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan times | | On Saturday, Condoleezza Rice told the press that Washington intended to appoint a US Army general as the administrator of the conquered Iraq once the war was over. Only at some stage in the future, she suggested, would power pass from the Pentagon to an interim Iraqi civilian authority. | | | |
| The tragedy of Karbala | | 2003-04-03 | Saeed Naqvi | The Indian Express | | Even though we were both travelling to cover the war for Doordarshan, Satish Jacob and I had taken difference routes to Baghdad. Satish was keen to travel via Dubai where, he had been told, he could buy a sat phone and one of those cameras employed in sting operations. | | | |
| Lessons from an unequal war | | 2003-04-03 | Jasjit Singh | The Indian Express | | Two weeks into war is obviously too early to start drawing lessons, especially when the end of the brutal conflict lies somewhere in the future. But it is possible to identify some pointers from the known experience of the past two weeks which we need to begin reflecting upon. | | | |
| Dumb Americana | | 2003-04-02 | Sagarika Ghose | India Express | | Nothing could be more indicative of America’s innocence abroad than the outraged statement by one of the officers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. | | | |
| Shock And Awe' Kills Innocents | | 2003-04-01 | Praful Bidwai | Rediff News | | When President George W Bush launched war against Iraq on March 20, his advisers promised him an almost painless short-duration conflict leading to a quick 'regime change.' The theorists of 'Shock and Awe' believed that a 'decapitating' strike on a government building in Baghdad would eliminate President Saddam Hussein and the core of Iraq's leadership, leading to the government's collapse or surrender. If that didn't work, the use of 3,000 deadly Tomahawk missiles in 48 hours -- more than the total used in the entire 1991 war -- would paralyse the Iraqi State and destroy military command posts. This would wreck the morale of Iraq's army and trigger its instant disintegration or a coup. | | | |
| The Loneliness of America | | 2003-03-31 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan Times | | As the war in Iraq enters its tenth day, there have been two big surprises — one to do with the military campaign itself and the other to do with the manner in which Indians have responded to it. | | | |
| Bearing the cross of Gujarat | | 2003-03-31 | Dominic Emmanuel | Indian Express | | There was more to the clandestine survey of Christians in Gujarat (carried out for the second time in three years) than just its stated objective that ‘‘the Gujarat government is preparing to introduce the anti-conversion bill’’. After all, the the anti-conversion bill was already on the BJP election manifesto and the Tamil Nadu anti-conversion law was fully backed by the BJP. | | | |
| It is Pax Americana, stupid! | | 2003-03-31 | Arvind Lavakare | Rediff News | | In his speech on March 11 in Washington at a convention of Veterans of War, Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy secretary of defence, said, 'The issue is not oil' and that if war comes, 'it will be a war to disarm Saddam's weapons of mass terror... a war of liberation to secure peace and freedom, not only for ourselves, but for the Iraqi people.' | | | |
| It isn’t about saving Private Ryan | | 2003-03-28 | Shekar Gupta | India Express | | One of the most memorable, and most repeated, scenes of the ongoing war so far was the one showing the “fierce” resistance put up by a small band of Iraqis hiding in a small building on the outskirts of Umm Qasr. | | | |
| Arabian knights | | 2003-03-27 | JUGULAR VEIN/JUG SURAIYA | The Times Of India | | George: Ta ra! Giddiap! Up an' at 'em, boy! Hi yo, Silver, away! Charge! How's that? Colin: Very impressive, Mr President. But don't you think when giving a photo-op to the media to see you leading the war you should use a real horse instead of a wooden rocking horse? | | | |
| |
| Fallacies of peace activists | | 2003-03-26 | Barun Mitra | Indian Express | | While war brings enormous human tragedy, there are times when it is necessary as a last step in order to defend freedom and restore peace. This is where the present anti-war movements have got it completely wrong. The peace activists are protesting against the war in Iraq. They are concerned about the possible human sufferings in the event of a war. But it is perhaps no coincidence that the same activists had hardly shown any concern for the sufferings of the people living under various brutal regimes like that of Saddam Hussain. In fact many of the activists seem to rationalise that these regimes are all products of US and other interventions. And when the US at last seems to recognise the limitations of realpolitik, and rectify the mistakes of the Cold War years, it is condemned for being neo-colonial. | | | |
| Periyar and Dalit failures | | 2003-03-20 | T.N. Gopalan | Indian Express | | E. V. Ramasamy Naicker or ‘Periyar’ is to the Dravidian parties what Gandhi is to the Congress, essentially an icon who demands ritual homage. To call for a re-examination of his life and works, as Ravikumar has done in his article on Periyar’s legacy (NIE, March 12) is an exercise in futility. | | | |
| The day after the Bush dictum | | 2003-03-20 | Column | Indian Express | | US President George Bush has just announced his intention to go to war in Iraq ‘‘at a time of our choosing’’, after setting a 48-hour deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave power. But Hussein remains obdurate. He has put Iraq on a war footing from March 15, dividing the country into four military regions, with the central region — Baghdad and his ancestral Tikrit province — under the command of his son, Qusay. | | | |
| Most unpopular war in history | | 2003-03-19 | K.P.Fabian | The Indian Express | | Why did the leaders of the international community choose the Azores islands, almost midway between Europe and America for a summit? In order to underline the importance they attach to trans-Atlantic solidarity? No. The choice was made in order to escape from anti-war demonstrators. | | | |
| The day after the Bush dictum | | 2003-03-19 | J.N.Dixit | The Indian Express | | US President George Bush has just announced his intention to go to war in Iraq ‘‘at a time of our choosing’’, after setting a 48-hour deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave power. But Hussein remains obdurate. He has put Iraq on a war footing from March 15, dividing the country into four military regions, with the central region — Baghdad and his ancestral Tikrit province — under the command of his son, Qusay. | | | |
| Both Mandir and Masjid | | 2003-03-15 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan Times | | In the 15 years or so that the controversy over the Babri Masjid has been centrestage in Indian politics, I have managed, somehow, to offend nearly every side in the dispute | | | |
| India in miniature | | 2003-03-13 | Khushwant Singh | The Hindustan Times | | My India is now confined to my little backyard. I spend most of my day from sunrise to sunset watching life go by. No one misses me; I miss no one. My patch of garden tells me how things are going in the country. Seasons change with alarming suddenness. One day I am trying to find a sunny spot to absorb as much sun as my body can take; a couple of days later I look for the shade of a huge tree in my compound to shelter myself from the sun. | | | |
| Ayodhya can be solved | | 2003-03-13 | T.V.R Shenoy | Indiaexpress | | On a February morning in AD 638, Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, said mass in the abbey church of St Stephen’s. Then, clad in his silk robes of office, he walked out to yield the city to the Arabs. | | | |
| Notes From The Underground | | 2003-03-12 | RANJIT BHUSHAN, POORNIMA JOSHI | Outlookindia | | Will the latest twist in a 50-year-old tale prove a temple existed or is it just digging for trouble? | | | |
| BJP’s historic obsessions | | 2003-03-11 | Kuldip Nayar | Indian Express | | To imagine that the Hindutva forces will be foiled by the BJP’s defeat in the Himachal Pradesh assembly election is to underestimate their strength. They have been able to catch the imagination of the middle class in most parts of the country. The extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is not liked. Yet, the spread of saffronisation by its sister organisation, the BJP, has contaminated many. The Hindu, rather than the Indian, identity has come to appeal to them as if they are trying to catch up with the ethos of Pakistan which regards Muslims and Hindus as two separate nations. | | | |
| BJP back on downswing | | 2003-03-10 | Praful Bidwai | Rediff News | | It was characteristic of the hubris-driven approach of Law Minister and former BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley that he should have 'strategised' an assured victory for his party in Himachal Pradesh through what he called 'carpet-bombing:' namely, bombarding the electorate to saturation with campaigning by the party's top guns. It was also typical of Mr Jaitley to imagine that the BJP would overcome its unpopularity (from five years of corrupt governance) by roping in Hindutva firebrand Narendra Modi. Mr Modi, he believed, would repeat the Gujarat 'experiment' by uniting the Hindus as Hindus, cutting across caste, class and regional divides. | | | |
| Another week, another 'Tehelka' | | 2003-03-10 | POLITICAL DIARY/NILANJANA BHADURI JHA | Times Of India | | Another week, another 'gate'. This time it has been christened fundsgate and has Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati scurrying between offence and defence as she tries to discredit bete noire Mulayam Singh Yadav's sting operation. | | | |
| Vajpayee versus Modi in 2004? | | 2003-03-07 | Saeed Naqvi | Indian Express | | That George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon and Narendra Modi are strutting about their respective enclaves at the same time in history is a stunning coincidence. Obviously, the vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union had to be filled by the far right because the pull which kept the right leaning towards the middle ground has disappeared. | | | |
| |
| India and the Iraq war | | 2003-03-06 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan Times | | About ten days ago, my colleague Aditya Sinha had an idea. Anti-war demonstrators were gathering in all the great cities of the Western world. | | | |
| Fighting Barista Brahminism? | | 2003-03-05 | Sagarika Ghose | Indian Express | | When members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad assembled in New Delhi last week they complained that they were treated with scorn. They said English-speaking secularists made fun of them. They said they were ridiculed by the ‘Macaulayist’ media | | | |
| Running with the bomb | | 2003-03-04 | Manpreet Sethi | Indian Express | | It was exactly a decade ago that the North Korean nuclear issue confronted the international community when Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the NPT on March 12, 1993. An ‘Agreed Framework’ was concluded in October 1994 that established a multinational consortium to finance and supply North Korea with two light water reactors. In exchange, Pyongyang froze its nuclear programme. It all looked very good on paper. However, over the next nine years, the ‘Agreed Framework’ saw several ups and downs. Allegations of violations and delays were made from both sides. Both sides were only buying time. North Korea used it to consolidate its regime, continue its nuclear weapons programme and build and sell two new generations of missiles. | | | |
| India and the Iraq war | | 2003-03-03 | Vir Sanghvi | Hindustan Times | | About ten days ago, my colleague Aditya Sinha had an idea. Anti-war demonstrators were gathering in all the great cities of the Western world. | | | |
| Not Gandhi’s Gujarat | | 2003-02-28 | Khushwant singh | Hindustan Times | | As the Gandhian scholar, Nagindas Sanghvi, put it: “Though Gandhi did belong to Gujarat, Gujarat no longer belonged to Gandhi and probably never did.” Long before the elections, Gujarat had become the political domain of the likes of L.K. Advani, Narendra Modi and Praveen Togadia. It was not for nothing that a non-Gujarati like Advani chose Gandhinagar as his electoral base and decided to launch his notorious rath yatra from Somnath, ending in the destruction of Babri masjid in Ayodhya. (It is noteworthy that the largest number of sewaks who actually destroyed the mosque were from Gujarat.) Narendra Modi fired his verbal Agni missiles at ‘Mian’ Musharraf and Togadia used abusive language to malign Sonia Gandhi and everyone else who disagreed with his point of view. Sanghvi points out that as early as 1969, Gujarat had been marked out as “a communally riot-prone zone”. | | | |
| Age of the bully | | 2003-02-28 | Khushwant singh | Hindustan Times | | Many utterances of Narendra Modi, Ashok Singhal, Giriraj Kishore and, most of all, Praveen Togadia are in clear violation of the law against spreading communal hatred, but no action is taken against them. Nor is it likely to be taken despite their announcements in public that they will go ahead with their plans to build a temple in Ayodhya regardless of what the Supreme Court or the Central government has to say. How long will we have to give in to these bullies? | | | |
Vision Jafri Information
Home
